Congressman: Wikileaks has info that would "demolish" Russian hack narrative.

Iconoclastic Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed that he had met Wednesday with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who still remains in his self-imposed five-year exile at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, afraid he will be subject to U.S. arrest if he leaves.

The reason for the unusual meeting (Rohrabacher claims he is the first member of congress to meet with Assange), according to Rohrabacher’s office, was to glean information from Assange on the real DNC leaker with an eye toward assisting the president in fending off charges about Russian hacking in Washington, and to help the WikiLeaks founder leave the embassy a free man.

According to Rohrabacher’s office, the two met for at least three hours. In a direct conversation with John Solomon at The Hill, the 15-term California congressman said further, “Julian also indicated that he is open to further discussions regarding specific information about the DNC email incident that is currently unknown to the public.”

Then, in a Thursday statement to the press, Rohrabacher indicated he already had information from the meeting, which he had planned to “divulge” to President Trump. He went even further with The Daily Caller Thursday, suggesting a deal might be in the making:

Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview Thursday that Assange is hoping to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he is currently in asylum, and that during the meeting they explored “what might be necessary to get him out.”

The congressman told The Daily Caller that “if [Assange] is going to give us a big favor, he would obviously have to be pardoned to leave the Ecuadorian embassy.”

This was confirmed Friday by Rohrabacher spokesman Ken Grubbs, who told TAC the congressman had been thinking about Assange and “whether he could demolish the narrative that the Russians had hacked (the DNC) and he thought of speaking to Assange directly.”

Grubbs also confirmed that a pardon could be down the road—if Assange can supply the goods.

“There is nothing on the table yet. There are possibilities; that was discussed,” he told TAC. “(Rep. Rohrabacher) does believe that if Mr. Assange comes forth with the information promised he does deserve a pardon.”

He also confirmed that Rohrabacher came back with information, “but apparently more is forthcoming.”

There is a lot to unpack here. First off Assange has been neither charged nor convicted of anything, so a “pardon” would be unusual — but not unprecedented. On Sept. 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford granted recently resigned president Richard Nixon a “full, free, and absolute pardon,” making it impossible for him to be indicted for any crimes connected to the Watergate scandal. Assange and his lawyers maintain there has been a grand jury convened that will ultimately indict him, and that charges are inevitable once he leaves the embassy. This is not paranoid delusion. President Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions said outright that there is renewed interest in Assange’s arrest for publishing stolen classified government documents via Wikileaks.

Washington’s ire against the government transparency crusader began in 2010 when Wikileaks published tens of thousands of documents relating to the Afghan and Iraq Wars, along with secret State Department cables and more, leaked by then-Private Bradley Manning (now Chelsea), and has continued through more recently, when Wikileaks published more than 8,000 pages divulging CIA spying and hacking tools that could be used against Americans. Back in April, CIA director Mike Pompeo was emphatic that Wikileaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” and should be treated as such.

The reason Assange fled to the embassy five years ago this month is that Swedish authorities wanted to serve him an arrest warrant on sex assault charges brought against him by two women back in that country, but he was afraid that both UK and Swedish authorities were just waiting to deliver him up to the Americans. So Ecuador gave him asylum.

The Swedes finally dropped their case against him in May, but the Brits say they are still obliged to pick him up on the lesser charge or failing to appear in court. UK officials have not commented on whether they have been working with the U.S. to arrest and extradite Assange, so the 45-year-old Australian is staying put for now and, judging from this reported conversation with Rohrabacher, perhaps trying to ensure his freedom by delivering a gift to Trump.

What twisted turns this story has taken since Wikileaks was heralded by many throughout the world for bringing to light many truths about the U.S. wars, its duplicity in foreign policy and its lack of candor with the American people about the failing military operations overseas, including unrecorded civilian deaths, and the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody.Then, Assange was a hero of the left and libertarian right and labeled a dangerous provocateur and a criminal by the establishment on both sides for his willingness to break all norms in his mission to free information for all. Despite President Obama’s pardon of Chelsea Manning after seven years in military incarceration, Washington has been clear in its indictment of Assange, whom they do not see as a whistleblower but as an exploiter of illegally obtained property and secrets, and a risk to national security.

Whether welcome or not, many of Assange’s old allies on the left have fallen away, and in their place are voices on the right like Sean Hannity, who seem all too happy to embrace Assange now that he’s ostensibly helped Trump win the presidency and bolster their own opposition to the Democratic narrative. (Trump himself has gone back and forth in his love/hate for Wikileaks.) Meanwhile, Assange has been accused of playing footsies with the Russians, sidelining their own transgressions in favor of embarrassing Clinton. Just last week,Foreign Policy published a piece accusing Assange of turning down a huge cache of Russian documents leaked from the Russian Interior Ministry during the 2016 election with information of Russian activities in Ukraine. Again, Wikileaks denied that it turned down the leaks based on the “country of origin,” but suggested leaks were rejected because they could not be verified, and these specifically had already been published by BBC and others in 2014. Assange raised this again in a Tweet Friday.

Rohrabacher, who in recent years has been called “Putin’s favorite congressman” has a long history with the Russians (after initially fighting, literally, against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the late 1980’s). He has been vocally skeptical of the Democratic push on the Russian hack story. In this vein, it is not surprising that he initiated this apparent negotiation with Assange in London.

Grubbs said that Trump did not ask Rohrabacher to engage, but when the time came, he would want the information Assange is presenting, and Rohrabacher would give it to him.

“Rohrabacher more than any other member, has been clear in his belief that Russia is not involved in this hack,” said John Kiriakou, the CIA whistleblower who did two years in federal prison and is now an activist for free information and protection for government whistleblowers. He, too, does not believe the Russians gave Wikileaks the DNC emails. “[Rohrabacher] is a senior member of congress, has held multiple committee chairs, is highly respected and he can carry the political weight that would allow him to bring a deal like this.”

What is curious is the confirmation that alt-right blogger and known internet troll Chuck Johnson had been involved in setting up the Rohrabacher meeting and was in the room, according to Grubbs. There is unflattering photographic proof, blared from a critic’s blog Thursday with an accompanying headline: “Photo of the Day: GOP Rep. Rohrabacher Poses With Holocaust Denier Chuck C. Johnson at Assange Meeting.”

What would this blogger, whose latest claim to fame is framing the wrong man as the driver of the car that plowed into a crowd and killed Heather Heyer in Charlottesville on August 12, be doing setting up such a meeting? His reputation, which includes a host of false stories including congressmen hiring prostitutes,publicly outing and shaming the wrong woman at the center of the University of Virginia rape controversy, and being banned permanently from Twitter after he asked for help to “take out” a black civil rights activist, should disqualify him from being anywhere near this delicate situation. Grubbs acknowledged Johnson’s involvement, but said he was just one of the people who emerged to help the congressman make the connections. He intimated this is a man the congressman’s office does not know well.

For his part, Assange emerged from all of this clear in his intention to not involve “third parties” in his quest to get out of the embassy and from under the cloud of U.S. extradition. In a statement via Wikileaks’ Facebook page, the group acknowledged the meeting with Rohrabacher, which was “at the congressman’s request” but mentioned nothing about an exchange of information or “a pardon.”

“Mr. Assange does not speak through third parties. Only statements issued directly by him or his lawyers can be considered authoritative.”

Kiriakou agrees getting Assange out of the embassy unscathed is going to be difficult considering that Pompeo, Sessions, and other Republicans have been calling for his head for years. Trump appears in no position today to be granting safe passage for a man who published the emails that are the very bone of contention in a special counsel investigation into possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

“There has been talk about a deal in some circles,” Kiriakou tells TAC. “But a lot of important people would have to be convinced. It’s going to be difficult for anybody to make a big decision like this. It’s going to be tough.”

Kelley Vlahos is managing editor of The American Conservative. Follow her on Twitter @Vlahos_at_TAC

And, as it’s been told, the security level of the DNC (or RNC, for that matter) servers was extremely low. No Russian intelligence agencies, Israeli intelligence agencies, American intelligence agencies “hostile to Democrats” were required. A teenage hacker would have been enough.

So Congressman Rohrabacher (R-Moscow) is going to find the “proof” that Russia wasn’t involved. That’s almost as definitive as Putin’s “Honest Injun – cross my heart and hope to die” assurance to Trump.

Leak or hack? It doesn’t matter! Who furnished the documents to WikiLeaks? It doesn’t matter! Trump Junior met with Russians who offered him DNC “dirt”. Subsequently, DNC dirt appeared on the internet via WikiLeaks. Does anybody really think that that was just an odd coincidence? The Russians claimed to have DNC dirt and by sheer fluke and unknown to the Russians, some DNC insider leaked precisely the same material to WikiLeaks! The material could have supplied to WikiLeaks by US alt-right figures, for example. Two such figures, along with a Russian, were caught red-handed in the MacronLeaks affair in France and more names may yet emerge in the still ongoing criminal investigation. Macron set a trap for the hackers by creating fake e-mails and thereby showed just how easy it is to create such fakes. That will make it difficult in the future to simply dish up e-mails and expect people to take them at face value. In addition, regardless of his reason for doing so, Assange made a huge mistake in refusing to publish the Russian e-mails. He thereby branded himself as a pro-Putin propagandist and destroyed his own credibility. Thus, any material now furnished by WikiLeaks will be dismissed as fake and the inevitable attempts by the pro-Putin camp to hype its authenticity will just reinforce the conviction that the material is fake. In fact, even if Assange proves that it was a leak not a hack and even if he proves that WikiLeaks got the material from an American source, that will not kill Russiagate, it will reinforce it. I can hardly see Trump pardoning Assange for getting him into even deeper trouble than he is already!

“Julian Assange, who still remains in his self-imposed five-year exile at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London”

Yeah, he can leave whenever he chooses and be a free man. Ha! The Brits will convict and imprison him for asking for political asylum. Is a broken condom discovered afterwards during consensual sex an assault? Almost always, the preferred method of discrediting political opponents is through inflammatory and unprovable sexual accusations.

“No Russian intelligence agencies, Israeli intelligence agencies, American intelligence agencies ‘hostile to Democrats’ were required. A teenage hacker would have been enough.”

Or a disgruntled Bernie Bro with insider access. Just as with Snowden, or Ellsberg, it’s the “insider” who always blows the whistle. Foreign intelligence agencies themselves classify the information they purloin, finding it of inestimable blackmail value. They don’t share it with the public.

I am a Man of the Left and I STILL support Julian Assange. I don’t care who or what malevolent institituion WikiLeaks’ leaks take down, I am ecumentical about it. And I want Assange OUT whatever it takes. Plus I find The American Conservative to often reflect my own views, especially on foreign policy. Is that too weird?

Then why so much pathos? Trump is entrapped, nothing saves him, the Beltway Consensus takes it back, liberals aka neocons and neocons aka liberals are again running like merry donkeys and happy elephants all around the DC stumbling upon cyclopic neobaroque “transgender” bathrooms time to time. Why such uneasiness and anxiety?

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Fran Macadam,

Or a disgruntled Bernie Bro with insider access.

That would be the most tragic outcome for the MSM. The narrative loses not only the part about Russians, but also the one about hackers.

This reads like Trump’s breathless promises of imminent Obama birther revelations that somehow never appeared. My personal opinion is that Assange is playing Rohrabacher like a violin. We’ll know soon enough. Until then, stories like this lie somewhere between rumor-mongering and Fake News. TAC should do better.

Russia! Russia! Russia! No proof, just assumptions, speculation and insults, right out of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Dumbo Hillary never stood a chance with all her lying. I hope the democrats keep going down this road, because that will guarantee their loss in the upcoming elections. Julian Assange is a very brave patriot and I for one pray for his survival.

I don’t think anyone has time for some BS respectability litmus tests in terms of tertiary figures who arrange meetings between secondary figures in aid of a primary figure. People have been banned from Twitter over nothing.

Could someone on this site do a review of Rules for Radicals? Please people on here keep referencing it without really knowing or understanding it. It gets annoying because it spreads ignorance amongst people that will never read it because they never have to because their friends on the internet told them all.

In a perfect world, the MSM wouldn’t be so biased towards the Democrat party & they would’ve done their jobs, meaning they would’ve been the ones to break the DNC leaks. But they didn’t.

The MSM is the PR arm of the Democrat campaign, which is why they have lost so much credibility with the average American. Now you have companies like Facebook, Google & Youtube doing their best to censor &/or force out dissenting voices. They want to silence the opposition in order to avoid another 2016 type victory in 2020. All they’re doing is dumping fuel on a volatile situation & setting the stage for a huge uprising against the political left. Which isn’t smart at all. There are 300 million guns in the US, (this is just the count of guns. Not actual ammo they hold…) one for every man, woman & child and these guns are in the hands of the people that tech companies like google, Facebook & Twitter seek to hold down & silence.

I see liberal advocates everywhere online calling for a Civil War, but I don’t think they really know what this means or what they are asking for. Nor do I think the regressive left knows exactly how much more prepared for this eventuality their ideological opponents on the right are.

People on the right obey the rule of law, we respect our police and most just wish to be left alone. It’s the Left that will not leave us alone, possibly because their end game has always been having an authoritarian state led by the Democrat party.

They hate Assange, I get that, but to millions of others, the man has become a firebrand for truth & I cannot think that any of them would take it well should our government take him into custody. Especially when Assange’s actions have revealed so much that is rotten within the so called “Democrat” party.

People think that just because the right isn’t out there screaming in the streets like so many on the left, day in, day out, that we don’t care…and that should the day come if things get really ugly, we won’t stand up & be counted & fight for freedom and other principles our country was founded on.

Cynthia McKinney has twice mentioned on Twitter that Rohrabacher was present at the Bobby Kennedy assassination and that he has CIA connections. You can see that as a young man he was in all sorts of trouble spots that do not bring tourism to mind. I am pretty sure Assange is aware of this.

thom prentice says: “Plus I find The American Conservative to often reflect my own views, especially on foreign policy. Is that too weird?”

My guess is that, like me, you reach the same conclusions for different reasons. Trade policy? Economic nationalism vs. proletarian internationalism! Gun control? Resisting government tyranny and protecting property rights vs. “Arm the Working Class for Socialist Revolution!” Other times, the same conclusions – for new urbanism and mass transit (Gods, do I miss Michael Lind’s take downs of Cato Institute and similar libertarian “studies”) – are reached by almost parallel paths. And then there are the topics that make me want to throw the latest issue against the nearest wall; these usually involve race, although the recent piece on Clarence Thomas of all people was quite thought provoking. I just hope the editors hold the line against too many articles or posts that could have just as easily been published by National Review or The Weekly Standard. To quote the late and deeply unlamented Phyllis Schlafly, TAC should be “A Choice, Not An Echo.”

This isn’t rocket science. Seth Rich copied the data to a USB drive and passed it on to Wikileaks. The fabricated Russian collusion delusion is an attempt by the DNC with the aid of the deep state to regain political power lost in a fair election.